Henson (1996) provided a number of demonstrations of error patterns in serial recall that contradict chaining models. Chaining models predict that when participants erroneously recall an item too early, recall should proceed from the point of error. In contradiction to such a prediction, Henson found evidence for a fill-in effect: participants…

Henson (1996) provided a number of demonstrations of error patterns in serial recall that contradict chaining models. One such error pattern concerned when participants make intrusions from prior lists: Rather than originating from random positions in the prior list, intrusions tend to be recalled in the same position as their position in the…

In the current set of studies, a new hypothesis regarding the cause of the commonly observed U-shaped serial position effect (SPE) in spelling is introduced and tested. Instead of greater competition during output or weaker positional representation for word-medial letters, commonly accepted explanations for the cause of the SPE, the…